Embedded Software Engineer II

AGC Automotive Americas and FORT Robotics announce remote driving program in Detroit using hidden and transparent On-Glass Antenna. AGC Automotive Americas, in collaboration with FORT Robotics (formerly Mapless AI), today announced the launch of its hidden on-glass 4G/5G Retrofit Antenna for a live remote driving program operating on public roads in Detroit's Transportation Innovation Zone (TIZ). The deployment marks a transition from CES 2026 demonstration activity to active real-world operation supporting remote vehicle driving capabilities. The Detroit program is believed to be one of the only current implementations of a remotely operated vehicle system approved on US roads today utilizing hidden and transparent glass-integrated antenna designed to eliminate the need for bulky rooftop connectivity modules often used in on-road teleoperation systems. From live demo to road deployment. January's CES demo showcased an aftermarket remote-driving system kit live in operation, highlighting how antenna-integrated automotive glass can support the high-bandwidth, low-latency vehicle communications required for teleoperations - without additional visible rooftop hardware. The demonstration received industry attention and established the foundation for real-world operation in Detroit. AGC is the world's largest automotive glass manufacturer by market share, and its global connectivity R&D teams have been developing, testing and validating integrated glass antenna designs for market-leading OEMs since the 1970's. As smart mobility trends evolve in today's automotive industry, the company is developing solutions for tomorrow's customers and use cases, working with partner FORT Robotics for this on-road proof-of-concept aimed at future applications in OEM mass-production vehicles. Following Mapless AI's acquisition by FORT Robotics in May of this year, that concept has now moved into live operation on public roads, with AGC's antenna architecture actively supporting remote operation in real driving conditions. The remote driving platform originally developed by Mapless AI is now part of FORT Robotics' comprehensive Trust Layer for Physical AI, which includes solutions for active onboard safety, human-in-the-loop control, and outside-in safety. AGC's hidden connectivity solution utilizes a distributed antenna design with multiple hidden and transparent 5G antennas tucked away in the corners of the windshield and back window. This distributed design contributes to a more stable connection, helping to ensure safety and uptime. Taken together, AGC Automotive Americas and FORT Robotics now have a uniquely differentiated remote operations kit that does not require any additional external body antenna and can be easily retrofitted for compatible aftermarket fleets or natively integrated for future OEM vehicles. Sleek design integration with end users in mind. Traditional teleoperation vehicle configurations often require rooftop-mounted antennas and modem systems that alter vehicle appearance while increasing installation complexity and cost - often needing to drill holes in the vehicle body for aftermarket retrofits. An integrated glass antenna approach enables remote vehicle operation systems to be deployed in a way that maintains standard consumer vehicle appearance, making it suitable for rental fleets, mobility operators, and future autonomous support applications. "Remote driving is becoming a real need and opportunity in automotive mobility. AGC Automotive Americas is thinking ahead by designing the connectivity architecture with future consumers and fleet operators in mind," said an AGC spokesperson. "Bulky, exterior antenna hardware will make the vehicle less appealing to these stakeholders while also reducing aftermarket re-sale value, and our solution solves for this." Retrofit today, OEM integration tomorrow. A key aspect of the Detroit program is the system's ability to operate across both retrofit and future OEM use cases. The current deployment is an easy aftermarket installation and proves that mobility fleet operators can adopt remote driving services for existing, compatible fleet vehicles without affecting the exterior vehicle design or lowering future resale values. In parallel, AGC Automotive Americas and FORT Robotics are preparing glass antenna enabled designs for direct integration into OEM vehicle production programs, enabling remote driving systems to become a native part of future software-defined vehicles. This dual-path approach allows the technology to be deployed immediately in existing compatible fleets today and future OEM vehicles into the future. Design & validation: AGC anechoic chamber and on-road testing. Prior to on-road deployment, the AGC antenna system and FORT's remote driving platform were jointly validated using a combination of AGC anechoic chamber testing and real-world road evaluation. AGC's indoor, full-vehicle anechoic testing environment located in Ypsilanti, Michigan allowed engineers to precisely model and optimize expected performance under controlled RF conditions, ensuring more accurate and efficient on-road field testing in real-world driving conditions. Explore deployment opportunities. AGC Automotive Americas and FORT Robotics are currently engaging with fleet operators, mobility providers, and automotive OEM partners interested in evaluating real-world deployment of remote vehicle operation technologies. Reach out to learn more about OEM and aftermarket fleet integrations or related design, testing and validation services. About AGC Automotive Americas. AGC Automotive is a global leader in automotive glass and advanced materials, developing integrated solutions for connected, electric, and software-defined vehicles. Headquartered in Tokyo, the company holds top market share globally in the automotive glass segment, offering solutions and R&D services to the world's largest OEMs and advanced mobility fleets. AGC Automotive Americas handles regional commercial, R&D and business development operations for the company. It is part of the larger AGC Group, which employs approximately 57,000 people worldwide and generates annual sales of approximately $13 billion through its operations in more than 30 countries. AGC Automotive Americas is an active participant in the Greater Ann Arbor region's mobility and innovation ecosystem, with a presence in Ypsilanti and an ongoing relationship with Ann Arbor SPARK, the region's economic development organization. Through SPARK's business development efforts, AGC has benefited from strategic referrals and connections over several years. The company has also participated in SPARK's Tech Trek event, regularly engages in regional Mobility Meetups, and continues to build relationships with companies, innovators, and other partners across the region's growing mobility ecosystem.

SPAC market update August 19, 2026: NTWO to merge with FORT Robotics, ANSC to liquidate. Newbury Street II Acquisition Corp (NTWO) announced a merger with FORT Robotics on August 18, 2026; transaction details were still to follow. Separately, Agriculture & Natural Solutions Acquisition Corp (ANSC) said it will redeem public shares, wind down and... SPAC IPO update - August 19, 2026. No SPAC IPOs priced on August 19, 2026; August MTD now stands at 8 IPOs totaling $1.24B over 19 sessions. SPAC IPO Count. Monthly IPOs (last 13 months) Latest: 8 - Prior: 18 - MoM: -10

Etched doubles to $21B in a month, Temporal eyes $12B, and the week valuation math stopped making sense. AI chip maker Etched hits $21B just weeks after its last round, Temporal talks $12B for workflow software, and physical AI pulls $47B in six months while the DOJ starts asking VCs hard questions. Published August 19, 2026 Etched doubles its valuation in four weeks. Etched announced a $700 million round that values the AI inference chip startup at $21 billion. That's double the $10.3 billion Series C it closed last month, and four times the $5 billion from December. Jane Street led the round. The company builds custom silicon designed to accelerate transformer inference - the compute-heavy step that runs every time you hit "send" on a prompt. Investors are betting that general-purpose GPUs won't be efficient enough at scale, and that specialized hardware will capture the next wave of AI infrastructure spend. The speed is the story here. Doubling a $10B valuation in 30 days used to be a signal something broke. Now it's just August. Temporal targets $12B for workflow orchestration. Temporal Technologies is in talks to raise around $500 million at a pre-money valuation of at least $12 billion. The company's open-source platform handles workflow orchestration - the unglamorous job of making sure complex code doesn't fail halfway through a multi-step process. AI applications are increasingly multi-step: retrieve context, call a model, parse output, trigger an API, log the result. Temporal sits in the middle of that chain and makes sure nothing drops. It's infrastructure software, not a flashy product, but the valuation reflects how many companies now treat orchestration as critical path. Worth noting: this is still talks, not a closed round. But the fact that a workflow engine is being discussed at $12B says more about AI's plumbing needs than any model benchmark. Physical AI raised $47B in six months. VCs poured roughly $47.4 billion across 521 deals into physical AI startups in the first half of 2026 - robotics, aerospace, autonomous hardware, anything that puts AI into a machine instead of a data center. That's more capital in six months than the entire 2024 total for the category. The thesis: text and image generation were phase one. The next wave is robots that move, drones that fly, and factories that run themselves. Investors are betting that the same transformer architectures powering chatbots will also power physical systems once you add the right sensors and actuators. Two data points this week reinforce the trend. Fort Robotics, a Mark Cuban-backed company building safety systems for autonomous robots, is going public via SPAC at a $557 million enterprise value. And Velaura AI raised $110 million at a $1 billion+ valuation for AI chip design tools - chips optimized for physical applications, not cloud inference. The category is real. Whether the capital efficiency follows is the open question. Reach Capital closes $265M for AI in learning, health, and work. San Francisco-based Reach Capital closed a $265 million Fund V to back founders building AI applications for learning, health, and work. The fund will write $1-10 million checks from pre-seed through Series A into roughly 50 companies over the next three years. The firm's thesis: AI's biggest impact won't be automating creative work or writing marketing copy. It'll be in domains where personalization and expertise are currently expensive - tutoring, therapy, skills training, clinical decision support. Reach is betting on founders who can build verticalized AI that works in regulated, high-trust environments. No flashy model labs here. Just a belief that the next tier of AI applications will be domain-specific, compliance-aware, and built by people who understand the workflows they're replacing. The DOJ is asking VCs about board seats. The Department of Justice is reportedly investigating Andreessen Horowitz over partners sitting on boards of rival companies. The probe raises governance questions that could reshape how major VC firms oversee competing portfolio startups. VC board seats have always been a gray area. Firms invest in multiple companies in the same space, partners see roadmaps and financials, and everyone pretends information barriers work. The DOJ is now asking whether that model crosses antitrust lines when the competitors are direct and the market concentration is high. If this goes anywhere, it'll force funds to choose: write smaller checks with observer rights, or invest in fewer companies per partner. Either way, it's a constraint the 2021 playbook didn't account for. Seed rounds: sports AI, mobile coverage, and data storage. Three early-stage companies closed funding this week worth noting briefly: * Peripheral raised $8.7 million to turn live sports video into 3D experiences using AI, led by Deloitte Ventures and Inovia Capital. * InifiniG secured $5.2 million for mobile network coverage solutions aimed at office buildings and enterprise sites, led by J2 Ventures. * Space raised $2.4 million in pre-seed from a16z Speedrun to build next-generation data storage infrastructure. None of these are going to move markets this week. But they're useful as a pulse check: seed investors are still writing checks into hard-tech infrastructure and niche vertical AI, even as the mega-rounds dominate headlines. One SPAC, one delayed hearing. KARMAN LINE ACQUISITION CORP. priced a $200 million IPO at $10 per unit and started trading on Nasdaq under XTERU. It's a blank-check company looking for a tech target to acquire. The closing date is today, August 19. Meanwhile, a U.S. court delayed a hearing on Google's purchase of Spirit Airlines' data after a union raised objections. The case is worth watching for anyone tracking how regulators treat data as an asset class in M&A.